Board Game Arena

Playing on BGA is fun. The process of finding and starting a game however is less enjoyable. Below I share some of my observations. If you know how I can improve my experience please help me out!

• 1. I see two ways to search a game. From the lobby, or from the dedicated game page (where you end up if you press Play again after a game). What is the difference between these two, and why does it exist?

answered clearly here: https://boardgamearena.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=28095

• 2. Lineup for a game is displayed, Player x declines to start the game, I press Play Now again, and that Player x again is included in the lineup at that new table, again declines to start, and the cycle repeats. And as we have never played with that player before, we cannot block them either. And of course they have not violated the Terms.

• 3. Player x does not press the Accept button for a while, someone else decides to stop waiting and quits, I press Play Now again, and at the next table player x is again in the lineup, again does not Accept, and the cycle repeats.

• 4. Sometimes when trying to start a game it says “Player x refuses to play with player y”, which causes the table to collapse and we need to restart the searching process. Shouldn’t this be checked before seating players?

• 5. Sometimes I get seated at tables that do not match my preferences (“I never want to play with …”). I have only seen this happen when searching from the Lobby, not from the Replay screen.

• 6. In the Lobby the status is “searching for 0 opponents, but no table is created”.

• 7. Every now and then I am suddenly a spectator at a table, when I was only looking to play myself. I'm quite sure this has happened after I confirmed to start the game.

• 8. The table chats are confusing and mostly uninformative to me. When a game has started a player’s typed messages can be fun, useful and appropriate. Endless pop-ups of “player x joined the game”, “player y has left the game” don’t add any useful information. Is there a setting to stop seeing this

Points 2 and 3 are by far the most annoying - please share your tips.

Relevant settings:
Simple Game, Real-time, Automatic choice of opponents
Observations from playing: 6 nimmt!, Alhambra, Ticket to Ride, Splendor, Puerto Rico

For 2 and 3, you can give a private red thumb to avoid that player, even if you have never actually played a game with them before.

Nastaa wrote: ↑13 March 2023, 09:14 For 2 and 3, you can give a private red thumb to avoid that player, even if you have never actually played a game with them before.

I did not know this was possible, thank you!

More tips still welcome - after all I suspect the player is not sabotaging the games on purpose.

For 2. and 3.: When you host a table, you can kick any player before the „Accept“ screen is shown (on old lobby or equivalent on new lobby).

For 5. and 6.: Switch from automatic choice to manual (as far as I know, this distinction exists only in the old lobby).

For 7.: I am not sure about your situation here, but maybe it is like this: When you start or enter a game from the new lobby and you click on „Start now“, there is a countdown of 3 seconds and then – nothing seems to happen. (This situation is really confusing! Indeed the yellow table icon on top of the page gets a red mark with the number of games you have to play. If you click on it, you enter the game.) So people click again on „Start now“, not recognizing they start or enter another game. Maybe your situation is something similar.

Re (6): There was a discussion about this issue soon after the new lobby was created. (Both exist in tandem while teething problems with the new one are resolved, or players' objections die down.)

BGA claimed that players did not necessarily want 'never' to mean 'never' in their preferences, but only 'preferably not'. Those who responded to the thread overwhelmingly thought it should mean what it says.

This was supposed to have been changed back many weeks ago. I suggest you report it as a bug if it's still happening.

Thank you @cigma, @GeraldineMerida, will try all your suggestions.